Although the Israelis do have large prison camps where they hold thousands of Palestinians for engaging in resistance to Occupation, they haven’t put most Palestinians in formal concentration camps as opposed to encircling them with checkpoints and bantustans.

The territory of the Gaza Strip, however, functions as such a camp. 40% of its residents live in refugee camps, being descended from Palestinians whose land was taken by the Israelis in 1948. The entire territory is surrounded by the Israeli military. No port is allowed to operate and the Israelis bombed the airport that the West built for the Palestinians of Gaza. Over a third of the land cannot be farmed because the Israelis enforce a security belt within the strip where Palestinians are in danger of simply being shot down. Since 2007, the Israelis have put the Palestinians of Gaza ‘on a diet,’ drastically restricting imports, and have allowed the exportation of very little of what Gazans produce. These policies have created widespread poverty and 56% of the people are food insecure. Gaza, with a population of some 1.7 million, over half of whom are children, is the largest outdoor concentration camp in the world, under the tender ministrations of the Israeli government.

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4 Responses

The US Government should immediately demand a two state settlement to the Israel-Palestine tragedy, a regime change consisting of the arrest, trial and imprisonment of Benjamin Netanyahu and all of his cronies found guilty of crimes of inhumanity against the Palestinians.

Otherwise, the US government will remove all the military equipment and weapons given to Israel including nuclear bombs, put an embargo on all trade with Israel and end all diplomatic ties with Israel.

After reading Informed Comment for the last few weeks, how can an sane individual not agree with the above. If you disagree, then you could be found guilty of conspiring with terrorists.

The dangerous game of the Rich with their wars, politics, phony terrorism has to end. The corrupt billionaire and their puppet millionaires have to be stopped.

Calling Gaza a concentration camp seems like a gross distortion of a historically loaded term associated with Nazi lager and Soviet gulags. Just the fact that Gaza has one of the highest birth rates in the world belies the characterization.

Finally, you blame the situation completely on Israel, however Israel does not control Gaza’s border with Egypt. If Egypt wanted to open that border it could do so without any Israeli intervention.